Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
As my colleague said, seven--minus four--obviously will prevail, if that's the case, but I want to make a couple of points.
I agree with my colleague that if we are going to do this, then we need to call in a lot more folks to talk about it who have the actual experience. We talk about front line police officers, and I have a bit of a problem with that. I've talked to an awful lot of front line police officers, most recently an assistant commissioner with the RCMP, and I have not talked to a single front line police officer who would rely on this, or has relied on it, to any extent at all. I just have a hard time with people who tell me that's the case, because I know it's not.
In terms of the 6,500-hits-a-day discussion, when you say that it's inappropriate to question that, I'm sorry, it's entirely appropriate to question that. The misinformation that comes out because of that misquoted statistic skews the argument. To say that we have 6,500 hits or queries to the gun registry, and therefore it must be useful--it's just not true. My colleague has explained why that happens. I suggest to you that you know that's true. The experience in the U.K. and Australia, with similar draconian legislation--and they've had it longer than we have--has proven that it doesn't work.
The École Polytechnique was obviously a horrible crime. The gun registry would not have stopped what happened at the École Polytechnique. You cannot stop a madman who is intent on carrying out a crime like that. It would not have had any impact whatsoever.
We talk about the drastic measures that we're being told we're trying to take, but we're not talking about repealing Bill C-17 at all. That's been there for a long time and it's going to stay there. Criminal behaviour hasn't changed. We're not talking about the inanimate object, we're talking about the person. When you talk about equating drugs with guns, drugs are not legal, period. Firearms are legal, with restrictions, which we have in Bill C-17.
The firearms causing most of the damage in Canada are illegal firearms. Obviously criminals don't register their firearms, and we know that. Those guns are not coming, by and large, from peoples' basements, they're coming across the border. That's a fact. Any police association will tell you that. Canada Border Services will tell you that. Nobody is going to deny that women, that Canadians, that everybody needs protection from people who will intentionally cause them damage.
I have another problem with quoting statistics that go back to 1995 when the long gun registry didn't even come into effect until 1998. Reductions from between 1995 and 1998 have nothing to do with the question at hand. My problem with this argument always has been, on any side of an argument, that people use misleading data, misleading statistics, and half-truths to suit their arguments. Everybody on any side of an argument does that, and I'd be the first to acknowledge that.
I'd just like to finish with the suggestion that, if we are going to do this, we do indeed call some witnesses, including--no kidding--front line police officers, not chiefs of police associations. I don't know why some of them have done the politically expedient thing that they have done, but I can tell you that up to and including assistant commissioners of the RCMP, they're not buying this. Frankly, I don't buy it either.
So if we are going to go down that road, there are lots more folks we need to talk to, and I would urge that we do that.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.